The unemployment gap between the US and eurozone states will reach the highest
levels in modern history next year, according to a report by the OECD.

While the US jobless rate will continue falling to 6.7pc by the end of 2014 as recovery takes hold, the rate for the EMU currency bloc will rise to a fresh record of 12.3pc with large pockets of extreme distress.

A trans-Atlantic gap of 5.6 percentage points is unprecedented in modern times and appears to reflect the starkly different policies pursued by the two major blocs since the Lehman crisis.

The OECD listed many measures that can help mitigate the effects of unemployment and ease the way for displaced workers to find new jobs but left no doubt that the real villain is the contractionary policy mix in Europe.

“The main policy priority must be to take action to underpin aggregate demand and boost consumer and investor confidence. Monetary policies have to remain accommodative. The speed of fiscal consolidation should be calibrated to avoid excessive tightening,” it said.

Michael Darda, from MKM Partners, said the great difference between the US and Europe is that bold action by the US Federal Reserve has offset austerity, while the European Central Bank has chosen not to do so. “Monetary policy remains highly relevant,” he said.

The jobless rate is predicted to reach new highs of 28pc in Spain and 28.4pc in Greece, even as it falls 4.8pc in Germany, frustrating hopes that EMU states would converge over time.

Angel Gurría, the OECD secretary-general, said the recession in 2008-2009 has done lasting damage to the developed world. “The social scars of the crisis are far from being healed,” he said.

The pain has not been shared evenly, leading to a sharp rise in the inequality for household incomes. “Job loss has been concentrated among low-paid workers,” said the report.

“Concerns are growing in many countries about the strains that persistently high levels of unemployment are placing on the social fabric. More than five years have passed since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis but an uneven and weak recovery has not generated enough jobs to make a serious dent on unemployment in many countries,” it said. Total jobless numbers in the OECD states have risen from 32m to 48m.

The risk is that inequality will become even more extreme as crisis countries cut unemployment and welfare benefits. The report said it was “crucial” that automatic stabilisers be allowed to play their full role.

The widening intra-EMU gap between the North and South is feeding a starkly different perception of the crisis and making it ever harder to fashion a coherent policy for the whole currency bloc.

The OECD said there are disturbing signs that the jobless crisis in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain is permanently blighting part of the workforce. “The longer cyclically elevated levels of unemployment are allowed to persist, the higher the risk that it will become structural,” it said.

The one good sign is that governments have not repeated the mistake made during recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s of pushing older workers into early retirement on the assumption that this creates jobs for the young. The great wealth of evidence shows that the two cannot be substituted.

Older workers have weathered this crisis well, often helped by tax changes designed to avoid penalising those who want to keep working. That is small comfort for the young facing youth jobless rates of 60pc in Greece, 56pc in Spain, 52pc in South Africa, 42pc in Portugal, 39pc in Italy or 26pc in France.